plausible before I asked you for the truth. Let us go and look at the picture again-for I am as much at a loss as ever-and I should like to form some guess:-there can be no second picture behind this*."

We went upstairs. Sir Edward chanced to be in the gallery with one or two others. "Ah ha!" he exclaimed, when he saw which portrait we went up to,- is that your subject of inquiry to-day? Harry," he added, turning to me, "I will bet you five hundred to one that you do not guess the sobriquet which St. John has given to that lady, upon whom you are gazing so intently."

"Those are such long odds," I answered, "that it must be quite certain that any man who holds them must win. What is it?"

"You are quite right not to bet," said St. John; " and yet, did betting become my cloth, I might venture equal odds that you will own the name to be quite wrong from the mere intensity of its being right. I call her The Second Best!"

"That, most certainly, I never should have guessed; but how will your last paradoxical statement be proved true?"

"You shall judge for yourself. I will put into your hands original letters, of which a large collection was gathered by a lady of the same blood, but of a later date of existence, and a very different order of character. And yet 1, of all men, ought not to sneer at the goodhumoured, bustling, fidgety gatherer of Meynell manuscripts, for they have been of great use to me, in my similar researches, however little they may resemble her's in origin and spirit."

St. John brought the letters in the evening; they were written by different persons, and spread through nearly five-and-twenty years of time. But they were all with reference to Mistress Eveline Meynell, as he had selected them with that view. The first was from her father, Sir John, to his lady-wife. He was with the army in Germany during the Seven-Years'-War; it ran as follows:

"I fear, my worthy love, there is but distant prospect of my being able to return to you. Would that I had left the army in the last peace! I had done enough that I should not have feared having any thing wrong said of me; and I feel that, however campaigning may suit a bachelor, there is no place for an honest married man but his own dear home, with its fireside, and the wife and children of his heart around it. And, whilst I am plodding on in our marches, in these deep roads, and behold the family groups crowding to their doors to see us pass, and the little faces of the young ones turned up to ask explanations of their mother, or the lad climbing up to his father's shoulders to have a better view,-my heart has yearned for Arlescot, and for those who are there gathered together, and I have scarcely kept from weeping. And yet I have, now and then, reasons for thanks and gratitude to Heaven. When-and it happens not seldom-the people are plundered, and put to sufferings of which I cannot and will not speak, my heart has swelled with joy that such things do not take place in our island.

"I shall never forget the features of despair I saw yesterday on the face of a man, his wife, and two daughters, about the age of our own,

*

Family Portraits, No. IV. London Magazine, Sept. 1828.

1

who were by the road-side gazing on a house, over which the fire had gained full mastery, and which I found was their's. I exchanged a few words with the father, and his voice was that of one whose soul despair possesses! He stood like a statue-the words he spoke to me were almost such as, it is scarce a figure to say, a statue night utter. I asked him if that were his house? He only said, ‘Mine— mine-mine!' He seemed not to have been rich before, and now he was ruined totally. I put some gold into his hand-but he was quite unconscious of it, and he let it fall. His wife had sunken exhausted on the bank, and the two girls were assisting her.

66

My own dear Margaret, I thought of you, and Eveline, and Mary; and my heart blessed the Almighty that such things were far from you. Yet I dreamed last night that Arlescot was pillaged and on fire, and that you were under the large firs in front of the entrance, when a soldier came up, who was drunk as well as brutal, and who was about to discharge his pistol at you, when Eveline, who till then had been trembling, gained sudden courage for the moment, and convulsively snatched hold of the piece, which turned the muzzle towards the man himself, and the shock causing the discharge, the ball struck him, and he fell.

"I should not tell you foolish dreams, were it not that this serves to shew how much you all live in my mind. And, besides, this dream spoke truth of Eveline: it is just as she would have acted, delicate as she is, if you had been in danger.-Pray write me long accounts of yourself, and all of you; and above all, let me hear how Eveline gets on in all her curious studies. They would have been whims, and I should have forbidden them, in any one else; but in her they are real and sound, and will bring forth good fruit hereafter. Tell me amply of all that are with you. Henry writes to me himself constantly; but, for the others, I must trust to you. Tell me of Marytell me of Eveline-tell me of yourself,—and in the order in which I have placed them, much, more, most. To no love, indeed, but that for you, can my affection for Eveline be second. Blessed is the man who has such a daughter as she is, when her mother is such as you! Only once let me get back to you, and it shall be my fault if we ever are thus separated again."

The next letter is dated five or six years later, and it is from Eveline's brother, Sir Henry, who was then at Paris, shortly after the peace of 1763. Poor Sir John had never again seen that family, for whom his love was so strong and so tender: he was killed at Minden. Sir Henry, then about one-and-twenty, had been on the continent a great deal since, while Lady Meynell and her daughters had lived chiefly at Arlescot. The remainder, as regards that date, the letter itself will speak :

"Paris, June, 1764.

"Dearest Eveline.-The tone of my few last letters will, I think, to one so clear-sighted, prevent any great surprise being called forth by the contents of this. You will readily guess that I allude to my approaching marriage with Mademoiselle de Villebois; and hearty and fervent, I am confident, will be your wishes, that that marriage

may be to me the source of the degree of happiness which a happy marriage alone can produce.

"Of course, once the matter was finally determined upon, my heart turned to you. And now, Eveline, I must speak more at large concerning yourself than I have ever yet done to yourself-for I am certain, once you have read the grounds on which I found the entreaty I am about to make, that you will grant it. There are nearly five years between our ages, yet such has been the unusually early developement of your mind, such its natural powers, and such its peculiar cultivation, that I, bred as idle young gentlemen are, have for a long time looked upon you as more than my equal in the moral advantages of years, if not in their number. What my affection has been for you, I feel that your's for me must tell you far better than I could. The loss of our poor mother was doubly a blow to me, from its leaving you alone, for the time at least, in the world. Mary's marriage had taken her abroad for a period of some length. I also was abroad-you were left quite to yourself. I might say, so you have remained; for our excellent old aunt-who so kindly left her dear whist-table at Bath to give you a chaperonage, fitting, though not perhaps strictly necessary, even at Arlescot-must before now have bored both you and herself nearly to death. Moreover, it is quite clear that she could not permanently live at Arlescot-still less could you at Bath.

"What I wish, then, is that, as long as you remain a Meynell, you should make one of your brother's family.-You know that brother is more really attached to you than is any one else in the world;-he knows you better-and therefore he cannot be otherwise. I am quite well aware of all that is said about the annoyance and danger of a third person being resident in a bridal house, especially when that person is of the bridegroom's kin instead of the bride's. But this, to be true, requires that one of the three should have qualities which I hope none of us possess. It argues, in particular, littleness of mind on the part of one of the female members of the trio:what your's is I need not tell you what Adelaïde's is, lover as I am, I know.

"It would surprise you, indeed, if you were to be aware of the extent to which she is proud of you already-and of the impatience she feels at not being yet able to love you as I do. Strong and fervent as my passion is for Adelaïde, I cannot be blind to the extreme advantage which your society would be to her. She is a year younger than you —and, brilliant as are her talents, and expanded as I am convinced her mind will more and more rapidly become,-still she has not had your advantages to cultivate her natural gifts to the most sound and productive effect. She has exactly that character of feeling which, so far from being envious at this, will admire, with all her warmth of disposition, the merit itself, and be grateful, with all its generous tenderness, for the benefits it will produce in her. Yes, Eveline, she is worthy even of being your sister—and if I think that, you may be quite sure that there is no fear that any discordancy should arise through her means.

"As for the paltry aud unintelligible jealousy which I have heard sometimes arises on a sister's part at the brother's love for his wife exceeding that for her, I will not insult you by speaking on the subject. You know full well that my affection for you is second only to that

which the nature of things must, in every man, make the first:-or probably it is in character they differ rather than in degree.

"Let me hear from you, dear Eveline, to tell me that you will add to the happiness of our home-till you leave us to make another home less happy only because there will not be such a third as at Arlescot.

“Henri m'a confié le sujet sur lequel il vous écrivait: je me l'ai fait montrer sa lettre. Tout ce qu'il dit est vrai, hormis les louanges exaggerés dont il m'accable. Je vois prie de croire, ma deja-chère sœur, que mon âme partage son desir que vous fassiez le tiers de cet heureux trio dont il parle avec une tendresse si aimable et si vraie.

"A. de V."

I now began to see pretty clearly the sense in which St. John had given to Eveline the title of the Second Best. Her father had preferred only the wife of many and affectionate years-her brother had given but slight superiority to the object of his young yet perfect love. The next letter, however, spoke stronger still. It is from the young Lady Meynell, about a year after her marriage, to a young lady with whom she had formed an early intimacy. I have left the little postscript in the original-but this letter is long enough to need translation.

"So you have returned from Italy after your bridal tour of a year -and lo! you express surprise, first, at my being married; secondly, at my having married an Englishman; and above all, at my having consented to live in England.

"As for the first cause of wonder, you forget, ma chère, that time advances, and that I was only a month younger at the period of my marriage than you were at your's. With regard to my marrying an Englishman, you don't know what an Englishman Sir Henry is. He has all the polish of our most cultivated Parisians, without any of their frivolity of manner, or frequent littleness of mind. His delicacy of manners, indeed, arises from his own mind, instead of from the mimicry of others-which, in truth, prevents the word delicacy being applicable in its strict sense. Besides he has a strength of character, and a reality of purpose, which the difference of position between an English gentleman and one of our petits-maîtres de Cour, must, in the mass of instances, necessitate*. Do not think I am folle d'amour, thus to speak. No;-every month I live with my husband, my love for him, if it cannot well encrease in mere degree, becomes of a more intensely tender, as well as of a far nobler, character.

"As to my living in England, I certainly consented at first from its being the country of the man whom I married because I loved him. You know that I am of the religion of this country-indeed, if it had not been for the difference of customs which, to some extent, distinguishes the Protestants at Paris, Sir Henry and I never could have known each other before our marriage sufficiently for our affection to become what it did. It is true, then, I resigned my country for my husband.—My parents were dead; but they had not been so

It is to be remembered that the date of this is in the last ten years of Louis XV.'s reign-the most frivolous and contemptible era of French society.

long enough for the aunt, with whom I lived, at all to supply their place in my affections. It therefore cost me but little to resign that Paris you all prize so much, for the sake of one whom I both esteemed and loved beyond the power of words to speak.

"But now, I would not go back to France, save for an occasional visit, on any account-except it were his wish-and of that there is little fear. You can have no idea of what a country-life is in England. The dull, dismal, comfortless-vous ne connaissez pas même le termevous n'avez pas de mot pour le rendre-je dirai que le comfort embrace, dans son meilleur sens, tout ce qui fait passer la vie journaliere avec une jouissance la plus suave et constante;-mais même ici on abuse de ce mot, à force de s'en servir."

[I could not resist leaving this in the original-for it shews to an Englishman how thoroughly Lady Meynell felt what Comfort is in its highest signification, and yet how utterly her language was incapable to express what she understood so well. To resume.]

"The dull, dismal, comfortless life at a château in a distant province in France, can give you no conception of how we live in the country here. Here, at Arlescot, is an admirable house, of various dates, though all old-but not like your father's château in Champagne(so different from his house in the Fauxbourg St. Germain-) with doors not shutting, and windows not opening, no chair one can sit upon, and no table on which a dinner can fitly be placed. No-here, every thing is excellent and even luxurious;-and the society is delightfulfor we chuse part of it from the elite of our neighbours-and the rest is formed of our London friends who come down for weeks together.

"But, for nearly all the summer months, we were by choice alone. That is, there were no visitors-but our family circle is completed by a sister of Sir Henry's whom he has prevailed upon to live with us. Oh! Clara, such a woman I never met!-such talents!-such knowledge!-such exquisite tact!—for it is that which springs from delicate feelings, not the factitious tinsel of the world;-such matchless kindness of manner!-for its source is an incomparable heart. I never shall cease to think of the bursting affection with which she received her brother, on his arrival-still less shall I forget the numberless, and nameless, and indescribable offices of the truest and most considerate friendliness, by which she contrived to set me at my ease among strangers of whose habits of living I could know nothing-in a foreign land, of every custom of which I was of necessity ignorant. Nay, from what I did see, I am confident that there are a thousand delicate kindnesses which I never saw at all;-and what makes me certain of this, is, that I have, as my knowledge of England has encreased, discovered from time to time some actions of this invaluable character of good-nature, at Eveline's hands, of which I had been previously wholly unaware.

"Figure to yourself, Clara, if you can,-which I doubt exceedinglya young person, not even now above one-and-twenty, with a face of extreme intellectual beauty-without some share of which no mere physical regularity of feature deserves the name of beauty at all,—and which, as in the case of Eveline, can fully compensate for that far lower quality being incomplete. Her features certainly are not regu